C-YA

I am off to California because Chad and I like to travel to destinations that have the exact same weather that we are having here. Seriously, look it up, it is exactly the same. So behave yourselves and i will see you in a week.

Goodbye Old Navy Capris, I Will Miss You Least Of All

Earlier this month Chad and I had a conference and decided it was time for me to clean out my closet after discovering that I still had clothes from when i was nursing Olivia, fifteen pounds and four years ago. And by conference my husband begged me to go to the store and buy something, anything that was not grey. You see, I like grey, it is slimming without being black, it goes with everything and I think it is very boho chic. It is also remarkable in covering child secretions of all natures and marker. Chad thinks it is drab and frumpy.

So this week I spent the time that Olivia was in classes shopping. I hate shopping, don't get me wrong, i love BUYING but I hate mall parking lots, unflattering dressing room mirrors and feeling like you have to throw a full out tantrum to get a salesperson to help you. But I returned with dark denim, properly fitting undergarments and even a red a skirt. Couple this with my recent foray into eye creams you may not recognize me.

Hot Debate

Earlier tonight my father-in-law and i debated whether or not it was important to watch the debate live or just watch the clips and recaps on-line. I have to say after watching it live i can't imagine doing it any other way. i love to shout at the tv like it is a sporting event, to jump up and clap for the zingers and to use the middle finger spontaneously and frequently. Though never again will i watch it on CNN with that annoying pie chart "point scoring."

For Your Amusement

If you want to give yourself a good little laugh at some point over the next few days just call Chad up and say two little words-bail out. it is better to do it in person because then you get to see this little vein in his forehead pulse. Today's rant included the words fucknuts and shit for brains. I really like to get him started and then throw in words like golden parachute or today I just said, "That Sarah Palin really seems to have a handle on this." and watched him go completely apeshit crazy. Ooh I think I cracked a rib laughing. Thank goodness I am so secure in my complete ass-flat brokeness that i can laugh at impending doom.

Part 2

My spice rack, the great tragedy of my life is that I am not eight feet tall so that my spice rack could go all the way to the ceiling. I have a small secret stash in the pantry. The table and cushionless bench. The bench has a half-constructed cushion and the open bench is currently housing a lot of tools so it looks a little messy. Our chairs aren't here yet but they are the darker green in the glasses above with chrome legs. Most everything else accessory wise in the kitchen is one of the two shades of green in the glass, but I am thinking of branching out for the bench cushion . . .

Stark Realism

We are getting to the end of the kitchen project, well close enough to the end that i can submit tightly cropped picture that disguise other, more disastrous parts of the kitchen. Obviously we have not hit that accessories finishing part of the project, but you at least get the general idea. These shots are of the open shelving and a close up of the cork floor. I am a little skeptical about the space between the shelves, but I am going to switch some stuff around and get taller pieces on that bottom shelf first to see if it makes a difference. Love the floor, can't say enough great things about it. The counter tops were where I really had to eat crow. I hated Corian and thought it was a waste of money, but they are so low maintenance and easy to clean. I was petrified of white, but the pattern really ties in the floor and keeps every crumb from showing up.

Birthday or Bust

So I am already off the wagon. We spent most of yesterday at the IKEA and putting up shelves. Does it count if you listen to the football game? However, my shelves are almost up, and it will be awesome to see what my counter tops look like when they are not covered with dishes.

The highlight of the weekend was taking my sister to the mall for her eighteenth birthday. It saddens me to think that the mall is the highlight of anything, but for my sister it was because she got to take olivia to Sephora. There, the heavens opened, the choir of angels sang and the girls did makeovers together, with my credit card of course. As my sister made my four year old look like a tranny hooker I could just hear the wheels in her head turning about how much she hated me and wished that she could live with my sister instead. Dining on nothing but mac and cheese out of a box and the occasional Hot Pocket, nothing but SpongeBob on the television which would always be on. They would do their nails all day and fall asleep under Hello Kitty blankets at night. It would be heaven.

My sisters wheels were mostly focused on how much she could milk out of me, or if I balked, my mother, proving that Olivia and Lauren exist in a magical parallel universe.

You've Got Mail

I was feeling so inspired until just now when I read on Slate that someone hacked into Sarah Palin's personal e-mail and put it on the web. I am not ecstatic that someone posted her personal e-mail, what happened to her was totally illegal and wrong I think anyone would be humiliated at the thought of all the correspondence they had sent and thought no one would see.

However, I am downright giddy at the fact that we have exposed the woman who could very well be our next Vice President as a Yahoo user. If there are any readers out there using Yahoo as their primary e-mail address i mean to offend you. Stop the madness. Yahoo is the wrong phone number you write on a cocktail napkin at the bar to get rid of creepy drunk guy who is talking too close. Everyone should have a Yahoo account-that they use when you have to give an e-mail to register on a web site or to a salesperson. That's it. Yahoo is an invitation for spam, get gmail, it's free too.

Anyway, we have successfully exposed Sarah Palin, not just as a woman who apparently prays hard for lots of things, but as woman who was too lazy to sign up for AOL. Shame on you hackers. . . but maybe next time hack something worthwhile, like Michelle Obama's e-mail. Oh, i bet you would see some shit-talking in her e-mail.

Comic Con-vert

So, in case you haven't noticed Watchmen is what I am reading lately and no one is more surprised than me. I have spent many years ridiculing my husband for his comic book/sci fi tendencies; when he wanted to go to the Star Trek museum in Vegas I used that opportunity to blow all my free drink tickets at the nearest bar, I have foisted him off on his guy friends for everything from Star Wars movies to the release of the Heroes on-line comic books. However, I think it was seeing Persepolis that turned things around for me. It highlighted the often overlooked and under publicized genre of female authored comics about something other than superhero machismo. Watchmen is supposed to be the anti-hero comic so I am excited to be starting it. I don't know why i have waited so long, being a visual person I often have to re-read thing that I have just read to absorb them completely, not so with the comic books.

After doing some research, I also bought Olivia a comic book from a new publishing series by Art Spiegelman's wife. She loves it. So maybe we are all comic converted.

Yeah I know that i have been really boring lately. Chad and i have been trying to finish up the kitchen, but since he is back to his regular work schedule we are making really slow progress. Olivia has also been making the transition to taking no nap. This hasn't been as scary as I thought it would be, but her moods have been all over the place while we are trying to work out a new routine, so in the meantime the blog has been boring, boring, boring. I don' t even want to visit it it is so boring. Most of the blogs that I visit have been boring too.

So time to shake it up people, send me your cool links, crazy stories or funny one-liners. I haven't heard from ost of you in awhile anyway so comment to let me know you are out there, maybe it will be the just I need to get out of my blogging rut!

Touchdown

Angie and Mike have a long-standing tradition that they spend Sundays at home watching sports, they go no where and rarely host anyone. It is their time to be together as a family. Chad was raised this way as well, Sunday is family time. I have always been a little envious of people who could actually take a day to rest because it is not in my nature. Chad and I always cram Sunday full of errands, shopping, chores and projects since Saturdays are usually full of Olivia's activities and our socializing. However, last Sunday, by happenstance, we stayed home and relaxed all day. We had friends for brunch, but by one they had gone on their way and we rested. Football was the only channel on, Olivia dozed off on the couch while I cooked a yummy dinner. I have to admit, I am kind of hooked. I am going to give it another try this week; it will be hard not to answer the siren call of the errands, but I am going to combat it with this. A complete set of coloring sheets of all the hand signal referees use in football. I am always willing to learn something new and hopefully this will keep Olivia from making us crazy.

Happy Birthday Baby!

So Chad is the big 3-2 today, but since his birthday is not on the happiest of days we have started splitting the celebration over a few days. This year Chad managed to commandeer three days for his birthday. One dinner out, one for his favorite home cooked meal and Steph and Michele invited him over for bbq and my famous carrot cake over the weekend. I think he is even going to try and use Ariella and Eric to scam a fourth day. I will use this blog post as reminder for my birthday next year. However, Chad follows in the proud tradition of our friend Angie who declares a birthday week, which we here wholeheartedly support and enjoy!

So here is to Chad who had a terrific year where he received accolades at work, learned how to use all manner of tools at home and lost a few pounds. Here is to another great year for you, baby. I am glad you were born.

Aren't my parents cute?

You would never know from this picture that they make crazy. My mother thinks the kitchen is too stark, a nice stencil border will liven it right up.

In Tandem

Here is Olivia's Mallards Fan Photo of The Season winnings. As they rode it away to go vote yesterday I nearly vomited Americana.

Olivia "Hiking"

I decided to take advantage of her father being gone and take Olivia for a nice afternoon in the great outdoors. The best part ended of being right here. The rest of it was bitching and moaning that we had left the lake.

I Don't Wear Lipstick

I know it has been awhile, but you know I had to sit and stew about this Sarah Palin business. Bitch does not cover it people. Now, you know that I cannot stand it when women who are opinionated, or do not take crap off of people are called bitches. However, after spending the week defending Palin to my friends, spouse, and family, and rightfully I might add, predicting the bounce that she was going to give to the convention I appalled to see the bitch card get played. Why am I appalled that she used it? i understand that it is customary for the vice presidential candidate to be the nasty business, I am just not accustomed to them using it in the same speech where she describes herself as a proud hockey mom and is waving to her small children while she does it.

I guess hockey moms are different here in Madison, but I would have respected her a hell of a lot more if she said I don't need to have been in office a long time to know what the people of this country need and want. I represent a very underrepresented part of the populous and they think I am doing a great job. i am good mother and a good citizen and I am going to work hard. i thought the part of her speech where she talked about oil companies and oil dependence was very intelligent and articulate. Then she just blew it by getting nasty, and I thought, pretty personal with her attacks. I never want to model that kind of behavior to my kids and she just lost her support from a lot of moms like me that could have been swayed.

Especially since John McCain's speech was so sweet I just wanted to give him a little hard candy and tell him he was the best grandpa ever before I wheeled him back into his room at the home. i think he is playing it very smart and his ad at the Dems convention was classy. Obama needs to pull off classy for me at this point.

Green Mile

Okay, so maybe that is a little over-dramatic, but this week marks the too short walk down the last year at home with my baby. As we watched all the kids march off to school yesterday I did a little sigh knowing that Olivia will be making that walk one year from now. I know that she is ready to go, that she would go today and that makes me think that I did what I was supposed to do in life, make her an independent person. But who am I kidding? That kid was born not needing me for a thing. This stirs up all the emotions for me, excitement about all the fun things we are going to do in our last year, freedom to move on to the next stage of my life, disappointment that I will soon be old enough to have a school-aged child, of course sadness.

For now I am trying to get my focus on making it a terrific last year for both of us, unfortunately my curriculum planning is suffering because of the kitchen remodel. My husband is ditching us for fun in the pouring rain this weekend so I am going to take that time to finish up and maybe start planning a Mommy/daughter vacation, just the two of us maybe to NYC to show Olivia a dying breed, or to our old stomping grounds in DC? Either way, Chad and I have already vowed to make all our usual vacations longer because soon we won't be able to. So look out FL and CA Olivia's coming, and she is ecstatic to see anyone who is not wearing a tool belt.

One step forward

three steps back as the saying goes. This weekend saw the finish of the floor, but the death of my garbage disposal (under warranty, thank God), my ceiling fan, and my water filtration system (both NOT covered by their warranty). So now we have a week where we do nothing but shuttle in and out repair people and wait. However, the completion of the floor means we now get to sit inside and eat in our kitchen like decent people and just in the nick of time because if Olivia and I had one more 90 degree day dining al fresco I think she would have written to somebody and asked for new parents. I can't be sure that she hasn't done that already.